平台规模：总结与回顾
关键词: 设计、基础设施、交互、货币化、网络效应、平台、启动、规模、交易、病毒式传播
请注意： 本文末尾有指向其他评论、摘要和资源的链接。
书评
The information revolution has brought about the rise of a new business model: platforms. A platform business is rather like a base that has other things, like applications and products, layered on top. The platform itself doesn’t generate much value, the stuff on top does. Examples of platforms include YouTube, a platform with videos on it, and Amazon, a platform with merchandise on it.
Banking, education, healthcare — it’s hard to think of an industry that hasn’t been disrupted by platform businesses. As platforms emerge, they transform everything they touch. Today’s professional leaders must understand this new model or risk being left behind.
平台秤 looks at the complexities of platform theory and explains how to use this knowledge to create and manage platform businesses. Instructions are provided for platform design, starting with the core value unit and build out from there. It’s loaded with examples taken from prominent new economy companies, such as Amazon, Reddit and many other businesses. There is a companion website: www.platformed.info。 （仔细输入，platform.info 会带你到别处。）
This book is quite readable. Author Sangeet Paul Choudary moves easily between theory and practical guidance. Pragmatic in orientation, there is plenty of good advice for the designer. And although it was written for the platform designer, it avoids the pitfall of excessive jargon. For the most part, the ordinary laymen would have no trouble following this material. The glaring exception to this is perhaps so obvious that it escaped Choudary’s attention. Although the idea of the platform is well defined, that of 规模 is not. People with economic or business backgrounds will have no trouble understanding that scale relates to size and that to scale a company means to grow it. The layman doesn’t always know that which seems obvious to the professional, however. One omission with respect to the book’s organization: the lack of an index. Platform designers using this book as a reference will surely want to look up specific issues as they encounter them, but they will be unable to do so.
在出版这部作品的一年内，乔达里继续出版 平台革命.奇怪的是， 革命 几乎相同 平台秤. 规模具有比 革命.大多数平台公司的现实生活例子出现在 规模 也出现在 革命, although the latter includes additional examples that don’t appear in 规模.除了 Choudary 之外，Revolution 还提到了另外两位作者：Geoffrey Parker 和 Marshall Van Alstyne。
这些书几乎完全相同，以至于除了最忠实的读者之外，所有人都可能不想花时间阅读它们。在决定阅读这两本书中的哪一本时，最重要的考虑因素可能是学习风格。那些可以通过阅读其他人如何构建平台业务的例子来学到很多东西的人会想要阅读 革命;对这种叙述感到厌烦的人会在 规模.
概括
第 1 章：交互优先业务简介
The most popular business model used to be pipes, conduits through which companies produced goods and consumers consumed them. Value was created upstream and flowed in one direction: downstream. The model becoming popular in today’s business world is the platform. Platforms create little value themselves, instead providing space for producers and consumers to connect and interact in a manner that was previously impossible. The users of the platform create value.
平台代表了企业设计的根本性变化。连接性的增加、分散的生产和人工智能正在推动这种新设计的兴起。
平台导致市场发生三个主要转变：
- 平台上的参与者包括客户和生产者。例如，亚马逊用户包括买家和卖家；优步用户包括司机和乘客。
- 竞争优势也从资源转向生态系统。以前，大玩家是支配资源的人；他们有很多员工和很多实物资产。平台创造了消费者和生产者的生态系统，成功的平台擅长创建和培育这个生态系统。
- The third shift is in value creation, from processes to interactions. It’s the orchestration of interaction that creates value on a platform.
Platform scale is powered by a company’s ability to leverage and orchestrate a global ecosystem of producers and consumers, efficiently facilitating exchange and so creating value.
The old rules of pipeline business models no longer apply. The ecosystem is the new warehouse and the new supply chain. Network drives scale — the more people using a platform, the more valuable it is.
该平台需要改变思维方式：
- 数据是新的美元。
- 供给和需求都必须存在于满足生产者和消费者的水平。
- 策展和声誉是新的质量控制。
- 用户旅程是新的销售渠道。
- 分销是新的目的地。
- 行为设计是新的忠诚度计划。
第 2 章：设计交互优先平台
Technology alone doesn’t drive value. Some platforms with high value have simple technology. Value, rather, comes from the ecosystem and, perhaps more so, the interactions on the platform.
The platform itself doesn’t generate much value. It’s an underlying base on top of which other things — like applications — are layered. Instead of thinking of the platform as the infrastructure, think of it as a network. Information is shuttled between users (producers and consumers). The platform needs data to make recommendations and facilitate transactions.
价值单位是在生产者和消费者之间的这些互动中创造的。一个平台要想成功，就需要不断地创建这些单元。需要了解应该存在什么样的供应，以便进行交互。
在 秩序的本质, Christopher Alexander talks about architecture and building outward from the center. This is also true with platforms. Identifying the center and building out reduces the likelihood of clunky features that don’t fit well. The core value unit is the minimum standalone unit of value that is created on the platform. eBay would be nothing without sales listings; Instagram would be meaningless without pictures. These features constitute core value units.
核心价值必须在平台堆栈的上下文中考虑，决定平台如何运作的组件。主要有以下三种模式：
- Network dominated — If there’s a marketplace, the advertisements listing the goods for sale are the core value unit. If it’s a marketplace for standard services, the listings for the service are the value unit. If it’s a non-standard service (in other words, something that can’t be bought off the rack), the listings for the provider make up the value unit.
- Infrastructure dominated — Applications form the core value unit on a development platform. The smallest unit of content are value units on content platforms — a video, for example, on YouTube. Sometimes these units can be created by more than one producer, as happens on Wikipedia. In such cases, the creators’ experiences must be considered.
- Data dominated — Whether a Nest thermostat or a retail loyalty program, the value unit for data dominated platforms is data — the information that they traffic in.
创建交互需要价值单元。平台设计应该是创造价值：价值单元越多或单元的价值越高，平台价值就越大。但是，值因用户类型而异。对于生产者来说，平台是创造或储存价值的地方，是寻找客户的市场。对于消费者而言，平台会为他们筛选出最相关的价值单元。
To build a platform business, start with the core value unit and build the core interaction around the core value unit. Then design the process — for example, a process might include producers posting ads, consumers viewing ads, making purchases and PayPal processing the money. In this example, the advertisement is the core value unit. While a platform might have more than one kind of value unit or interaction, there is one that’s core to the business.
围绕这个核心交互设计平台，并通过这个镜头评估所有添加的特性和功能。如果在一个平台上有不同种类的交互，它们必须一次设计一个，从中心开始。
The three things you need for the interaction are producer, consumer and platform. Interactions always involve an exchange of information, goods and/or services and currency, and filters are central to the transaction. Abundance leads to too much choice, and people could abandon the platform if it’s too hard to find what they’re looking for.
一个好的平台具有足够的弹性，因此用户可以将其带到意想不到的方向。有随机性。有运气。平台需要允许紧急行为。它有时可以将平台带入一个新的方向。
第 3 章：构建交互优先平台
在平台上有多种不同的方式来驱动交互：预先存在的关系、内容创建和消费、协调、竞争、文化等。一些用户通过影响力驱动交互。平台通常有多个驱动程序，不同的驱动程序可能会产生非常不同的结果。
To design a platform, it’s critical to understand what motivates producers. Access to the market is very important, so tools that simplify production are useful features. There should also be good curation to bring the best to the top, with clear rules so everyone has access to top content. Non-monetary incentives are important — things like reputation and recognition. It’s good to have mechanisms to convert consumers to producers and for consumers to provide feedback to producers.
累积价值使您使用的平台越多，它就越有价值。有四种：
- 名声。
- 影响。
- 收藏。制作人可以拥有他们的作品集。
- 学习过滤器。使平台更适合个人。
Friction impacts interactions. It’s bad when it interferes with the smooth functioning of interactions. It can be good when it curtails undesirable behavior. Friction can be a source of quality. It can be a source of signaling, (for example, LinkedIn has a lengthy process to set up a profile, but then it results in very detailed information.) Friction can also be a barrier; for example, sometimes people don’t want to or can’t pay membership fees. As ever, it’s all about the interactions. Evaluate how friction impacts interactions.
Curating provides evidence for new consumers to base their decisions on and allows the best to rise to the top. Social curation can be accomplished through upvoting, reviewing, etc. It’s good to let people try something and then express their opinion, it gets them in the door. Once opinions are expressed, social curation begins.
Platforms should have some form of quality ranking and allow for feedback for the producer. The more expensive it is to sample some form of content or service, the more time it will take to achieve a scale where social curation works well. That’s why social curation tends to be more inefficient on platforms with higher sampling costs.
Interactions require trust: Knowing someone’s identity increases trust. Involvement by a moderator builds trust. So does community feedback, codified behavior, culture, completeness of information and insurance.
Interaction failure means that, for whatever reason, an interaction didn’t result in a transaction. A grand example of interaction failure came about through the competition between Uber and Lyft. Uber played dirty. They hired people to use disposable phones, call Lyft and order rides and then later cancel the rides. All these cancellations mucked up the system and users left the platform. Interaction failures should be avoided, but when they do happen they need to be tracked.
It’s important to keep the interaction on the platform. Some services need to be discussed in person. The risk is that the users will circumnavigate the platform and do their transaction without the platform getting its cut. There are ways to provide incentives to keep transactions on the platform. The platform can charge a fee to place an ad, or require a subscription. Adding features, (like invoicing services, for example,) can make it worth users’ time to stay on the platform. Workflow management tools are particularly called out, but really any administrative task could potentially add value.
第 4 章：解决先有鸡还是先有蛋的问题
Platforms present a chicken-and-egg problem: how to get enough users on both sides of the platform to achieve the critical mass necessary to make the platform operate. One way of approaching this problem is to find something that will attract one side of the market even when the other side has yet to be developed. Once one side is engaged, however, it is important to ensure there is no friction in the feedback loop — no barriers to user participation. The platform needs to reach critical mass as quickly as possible. Appreciate that and tailor incentives to them.
In some situations, it’s possible to launch in standalone mode, without users. But there has to be a way users can enjoy it even when others are not yet on it, a hook. Users will sign on because they like the features of the hook, not because they are promised a community with other users somewhere down the road. OpenTable did this by offering restaurants a booking management system that worked as a standalone application. After enough restaurants joined the platform, OpenTable added a feature allowing the public to make reservations. Delicious began with a tool that allowed people to store browser bookmarks in the cloud. After lots of people joined, social features were added so people could share bookmarks. With a community of interacting users, network effects began to take hold.
Another approach is to fake it. Counterfeit profiles can provide the illusion that a community exists long enough to get users onboard so that a real community develops. Demand can be seeded by doing things like making real purchases from sellers when there aren’t enough transactions on the system. Tactics like faking and seeding must be approached cautiously, however, as they can backfire.
The reality is that some users are harder to capture than others. You can get the more difficult side to join by offering incentives — the easier side will follow. This strategy is used by nightclubs that offer cheap or free drinks to women on “ladies’ night.” Women are drawn to the bar by the promise of cheap drinks, and men are drawn because women are present.
平台都是独一无二的，从来没有一种万能的解决方案来获取用户。然而，本章中介绍的案例为开发解决方案提供了一个很好的起点。
第 5 章：病毒式传播：网络世界中的规模
平台是由增长推动的，而增长是通过增加用户和互动来创造的。
病毒增长的趋势被称为 病毒式传播，保证触发拼写检查的单词。病毒式传播不同于口耳相传，当人们听说新事物并想要尝试时。通过病毒式传播，人们通过使用它来发现新事物。例如，有人向他们的朋友发送 YouTube 视频的链接。收件人单击链接并通过观看视频、作为平台用户参与来发现 YouTube。
Virality isn’t the same thing as network effect. Network effect comes from growth within the walls of the platform. For example, the more people that are on LinkedIn, the more people you can contact through their messaging system. You can’t, however, use that system to email someone who isn’t on LinkedIn. Virality means that a platform is pulling from other platforms. Gmail has virality because you can use that platform to send an email to a different platform, like Hotmail. Hopefully, the exposure the platform gains from contact with other platforms will draw new users in. Keep in mind, however, that virality is good, but it can’t be your only growth strategy.
Virality should be well integrated into a platform without any feeling of awkwardness. People shouldn’t be encouraged to needlessly spam their friends for the sake of virality. Look at it as a design problem. Find a way to incentivize its spread.
Make core value units that can be spread to other networks. For example, it’s easy for users to share JPEGs just about anywhere, but not so much with holograms. Don’t make holograms the core value unit of your platform. People won’t be able to circulate them very easily. The units that get spread around act like advertisements for the platform.
在选择用于传播单位的网络时要小心。它们应该与您的平台相关。 LinkedIn 选择与 Microsoft Outlook 合作是有道理的；这两个平台相互适合。为那些永恒网络上的用户增加价值。用户将看到该平台有多棒并被它所吸引。
构建属于平台正常功能一部分的病毒式引擎。有很多单位转移到外部平台。为那些外部平台上的人们提供一种与单位互动的方式，也许是通过点击它们或采取其他一些简单的行动。建立病毒式增长的循环；保持这些周期短，这样一切都会很快发生。
第 6 章：反向网络效应
通常网络效应对平台有利，但也有一些会产生不良后果。为避免负面网络效应，平台应始终努力保持老用户的参与度并在规模上保持高质量。
你可以做一些特定的事情来扩展平台的不同维度。有许多建议的策略，例如如何增加内容创建、消费、定制、策展、极端案例和交互风险的规模。
增加平台互动，强化核心互动，聚焦创作、策展、定制、消费。要规模化创造，重点建设生产者基地。确保生产者因参与而获得足够的奖励，并拥有强大的反馈系统来帮助生产者保持高水平的质量。扩大创造有助于扩大消费。更好、更多的内容可以吸引更多的消费者。这是一个正反馈循环：消费者越多，对平台感兴趣的生产者就越多。
对于所有这些内容，该平台需要良好的过滤器。需要有良好的数据捕获才能了解用户，以便过滤器可以提出最佳建议。关于用户及其偏好的数据收集应该是连续的。这将允许根据每个用户的需求和愿望定制平台。
随着平台的发展，策展可确保质量保持高水平。对此有几种不同的方法。内容可以编辑策划，人工编辑充当平台贡献的看门人。算法管理允许算法识别不受欢迎的内容并将其从平台中删除。社交管理通常是通过让用户对内容进行评分，为其他用户的利益识别好坏来实现的。在实践中，大多数平台使用这些策略的某种组合。
It’s important to mitigate risk as platforms scale. The platform should be designed to diminish the opportunity for misuse. Interaction risk needs to be minimized or else people won’t want to use the platform.
Beyond a certain scale, a platform might become less useful for its users. Maybe new users ruin it, or curation sucks and it’s hard to find anything good among the junk, or else it gets spammy. Mindlessly pursuing scale for scale’s sake can harm the platform. Keep the negative network effects at bay by scaling up quality as the platform grows in scale.
有许多现实生活中的例子说明了大规模失败的各种方式。这些案例反映并强化了本章介绍的概念。就像对不同失败方式的描述一样，这些对障碍的描述也反映并强化了书中介绍的概念。
一个简短的结语为将现有管道业务转变为平台提供了一些指导。为了让企业在未来生存，他们会发现平台模式为他们提供了取得成功所需的优势。平台世界将继续存在。